Chuck Wendig had a great post yesterday about writing. Once upon a time, I sat in a writing workshop class: a critique circle with a bunch of other writers. The piece we were critiquing was another classmate’s novel chapter, and everyone else but the workshop leader had gone. I was up. “What I liked most […]

Sometimes, having a blog can feel like being out there all alone wondering, “WTF do I do now?” Joel Friedlander and Joan Stewart have a new package out that’s designed to help drive traffic to your blog: Blog Post Templates for Authors. Now, I actually don’t have a problem getting traffic to my blog, but […]

Years ago, based on something Patrick Nielsen Hayden said (“You have three names, all of them difficult to spell.”), I decided to submit my work to publishers under the name D. S. Moen rather than my full name of Deirdre Saoirse Moen. Partly that was being conscious, having worked in a bookstore, that anyone with […]

SFWA, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, has just changed their membership rules. There will be some speedbumps, as this is a major structural change. Effective March 1, both indie and small press authors will be eligible for SFWA’s Active and Associate memberships. For Active (full) membership: One novel-length work for which the […]

Another year! And a post to let those of you who vote for Hugos, Nebulas and other science fiction/fantasy awards know what I’ve done in the last year for your award nomination consideration. Without further ado: Best Fan Writer Five Several of my best posts: After fifty years of it never being public, I broke […]

Joel Friedlander, aka the book designer, wrote a blog post about book landing pages. I’ve been in the middle of writing a long blog post about web sites for authors, and I think I’m going to tear up my post and go home. (Actually, no, I won’t, but it’s going to wait until next weekend […]

Tim Grahl of Out:think has a new free course coming up called Hacking Amazon. (Above graphic is from Tim.) A few weeks ago, I published an article about how to launch your book with 25+ Amazon customer reviews. This article really exploded, and it got me thinking . . . I know a lot of […]

(Product link on Redbubble.) I wrote this piece in July after a particularly frustrating week. One of those pieces of writing advice came back up (like vomit) again this week, and I’ve been in more discussions than I’d ever hope to be about it. I’ve reduced it to two things that really annoy me. Failing […]

I’m extremely honored to be a guest on Writing Excuses this week, talking about the author-convention relationship from the convention programming head point of view. So here are a few tips, in no particular order, to make it easier for programming staff: Have a website. Better: have a website with your own domain name. When […]

Last week, I had an “aha!” moment, finally understanding what Mike Resnick was going on about. I wrote about the cover controversy earlier this year, complete with sample covers from the genre he was complaining about. Here’s what Resnick said (click for pic of text, quoted below) And a lot of it abounded in bare, […]